


two kinds of dumbasses

by lionsenpai



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 20:24:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14880627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionsenpai/pseuds/lionsenpai
Summary: “Wait, wait, wait,” Naruto cuts in, and Karin shoots him a look like murder. Unfortunately, he isn’t deterred. “You’re mad at her for smiling at you?”“She’s doing it to be an ass!” Karin insists, shifting her accusatory gaze towards Sakura, who has somehow joined them at the table now and is picking off Naruto’s tray.“Guilty,” Sakura laughs.





	two kinds of dumbasses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [suitablyskippy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitablyskippy/gifts).



> two years after reading 'usually very normal about these things', which is a phenomenal and SUPER fun sakukarin fic by suitablyskippy, i happened upon this in my drive, dusted it off, and here we are!

7:36 in the morning is an ungodly time, no matter how Karin looks at. 

Admittedly, she isn’t trying very hard to look on the bright side, not when the early January chill is sinking right through her too-thin jacket and down into her bones. Besides, with the sun already blinding her with its ascent, the world getting any brighter would be nothing short of cataclysmic. So Karin huddles in on herself and leans into the slope of the mountain standing between her and her first class of the day—organic chemistry, ugh—with a scarf knotted tightly around her neck and a coffee from the University’s only decent cafe cradled close to her chest. 

7:36 in the morning shouldn’t exist—anywhere—and certainly not here, where she has to suffer it. 

She’s halfway up the hill, still more asleep than rightly awake, when she hears the steady pound of footsteps behind her. A first-year late to their class, probably, and she’s quite pleased with her ability to string even that much thought together when she hasn’t even tasted her coffee. 

Still squinting from the light of the rising sun, she stays her course and lifts her cup to her lips, ready for sweet deliverance from this hellish existence—and promptly feels all the air rush out of her as she’s slammed into by a freight train. 

Her coffee dumps onto the ground, and she follows after it, sputtering in surprise as her knees impact painfully against the pavement, her palms dropping right into the hot coffee running across the sidewalk. She’s halfway through a string of curses that are more instinct than awareness before she realizes that the impossible force which just threw her to the ground has a voice and is  _ talking _ .

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!”

Before Karin can so much as blink, she’s being hauled to her feet with a strength that feels distinctly superhuman. 

“I didn’t see you at all. Are you okay?” some girl asks, her breath coming hard. 

Karin squints and has to focus to make out the details of her attacker: just about her height, soft face,  _ pink hair  _ which falls around her face in disarray—and a tank top that reads  _ My Getting Sexy Workout Shirt.  _

“Wow, nice one, Forehead. You’re like, such a clutz.” Beside her, someone else comes to an abrupt stop, also breathing hard, with miles of blonde hair and a similar tank that reads  _ Squats Are A Girl’s Best Friend. _

The first one pointedly ignores the second and says, “I can buy you another coffee if you want.”

Bristling, Karin jerks away from where the first of the two is touching her shoulder, her sluggish brain finally processing that this is not the time to be listening, it’s the time to be chewing someone out. 

“Are you stupid or something?” she snaps, wiping her palms off on her jeans like she’s trying to swat at particularly persistent mosquitos. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going?!”

The two look between each other, their cheeks flushed red from the cold and exertion, and the first makes a face that’s all dumbstruck surprise waxing sudden indignation. The second responds in kind and then turns to fix Karin with a scowl to level buildings. 

“Wow, okay,” the first says.

“Rude,” the second interjects.

“We’re just gonna go then. Come on, Ino.”

She takes off into a steady jog, disappearing into the glare of the sun, and the second hesitates a moment longer to hold Karin’s impressively angry gaze before starting after her, calling, “Wait up, Forehead!”

They’re in and out in the span of ninety seconds, but Karin already knows her day is ruined. That coffee was her one chance to get through one of Professor Shizune’s lectures without falling asleep, and now it’s running beneath her shoes. The walk back to the cafe would take her all the way to the base of the hill, and she’s not sure she wouldn’t simply return to her little apartment just off campus if she went that far. 

Grumbling beneath her breath, Karin glances over her shoulder to where she knows coffee awaits her and then turns and looks directly into the sun, using her hand as a visor. Vaguely, she spies their silhouettes farther ahead, already way out of range for her words to reach them. 

Still, she mutters her most spiteful  _ fucking morons _ , hauls her bag up higher on her shoulder, and starts up the hill again.

*

It’s a chilly February afternoon when she sees them next. 

Karin’s up to her neck in sweaters and coats, but she still can’t manage to stop her teeth from chattering as she hurries from the lunch hall to the library to wait out her next class in peace and warmth. Juugo offered that perhaps she’d fare better if she hadn’t shaved half her head in the name of fashion, to which she responded with something along the lines of  _ well, what do you expect me to do about it now _ ?

He didn’t respond to that—not that she expected he would—and now Karin finds herself returning to that conversation with rightful offense. She’s halfway through chiding him back into one of his legendary silences in her head when she notices a flash of pink and, a moment later, yellow.

Karin looks up in time to notice the two from last week making their way around one of the university’s open lawns one street ahead of her. She sharpens, adjusting her glasses like she’s trying to get a better look at them, and then has the great misfortune of reading their stupid tanks.

This time the pink haired one—Forehead—is wearing one that reads  _ I Workout Because Punching People Is Frowned Upon  _ and the blonde—Ino—is wearing one emblazoned with the words  _ Friends Who Sweat Together Stay Together. _

Karin sticks her tongue out like she’s gagging on the sight of them, and just then, the blonde glances up and locks eyes with her. She almost misses a step, which would have been immensely funny, but she manages to keep her feet long enough to close the small gap between her and Forehead and jostle her shoulder. Forehead looks back, and there’s no missing the incriminating nod aimed right at her. 

Recognition blanks her face when they see each other, but Karin heads off whatever face she’s going to make by sneering so hard she’s sure she split her chapped lips. 

Ino has the gall to glare daggers in her direction, but Forehead slows a little, refusing to blink for a lengthy moment before finally, finally—smiling at her? Karin recoils as though she’s been slapped, and to add insult to injury, Forehead waves, long and determined until Karin has to look away from sheer disbelief. 

What’s up with  _ that _ ?

As if Ino is wondering the same thing, she tugs Forehead’s hand down out of the air and says something appropriately berating—Karin hopes. But instead of being cowed, Forehead only smiles bigger at Ino, her beet red face the picture of delight. 

Karin stands, ice creeping into her joints, and only glances up when she’s sure the two of them are gone. She still catches sight of their receding forms, side by side, smiling at each other like there’s anything worth smiling about after that unsavory encounter. Karin chews her lip, so frustrated she isn’t sure whether she wants to chase them down or throw down her bag and stomp off in the other direction. 

The cutting breeze is reason enough not to stand around figuring it out, so Karin huffs, her breath a stream of mist which is taken with the wind, and pulls her bag up higher on her shoulder. 

She’s got a date with the library, but like hell she’s venturing back out into this for Tsunade’s Genetics and Development course.

*

After that, it’s almost like a game. 

Karin looks over her shoulder already gritting her teeth every time she hears the sound of running feet, and even when it’s someone else, she feels Forehead’s grin, too big, too white. It feels like losing every time—especially when it’s actually them. 

Twice a week, they pass each other on the many tortuous paths across campus, Ino and Forehead always perfectly in step, their shirts as revolting as ever. 

She sees  _ I Woke Up Like This _ and  _ There’s No Way You Woke Up Like That _ around the back of the chemistry building after class. Five blocks from her apartment, she comes across  _ Muscles And Mascara _ and  _ Oh My Quad _ taking up the entire sidewalk on the other side of the road. And after choosing to, once again, skip Genetics and Development to try a new route,  _ I’m Sweaty And I Know It _ and  _ Crossfit Cuties _ all but appear from nowhere, turning a corner and meeting her head on. 

They always seem as surprised as she is, but instead of cringing at the mere sight of her, they both smile, wide and cheesy, and wave. 

“Afternoon!” Forehead is breathless as she races by. 

“Looking cheery today!” Ino adds as she weaves around the other side of her. 

They rejoin behind Karin, and she’s so furious she turns around, red in the face, and yells after them, “Is running all you idiots  _ do _ ?”

Neither of them stop to answer her, but she knows if they did it would be nothing but grins. 

It’s ridiculous! Who spends the kind of money they must be spending to go to college! Just to run around acting stupid! Who even does that!

She wants to stomp her feet and throw something, and for the first time since this charade began, she lets herself, tossing her bag with disgust and giving it a brutal kick _ just because _ . The flap pops open, and her things spill onto the pavement, but she’s so mad she doesn’t even care. 

What is  _ with _ them?

*

The next time she sees one of them, she’s thirty minutes into her weekly rendezvous with Naruto. 

Rendezvous is a mild term for  _ forcibly required lunches _ , but since he’s stopped bringing his boyfriend to every single one, their meetings have been less trouble to attend than they are to avoid. 

“Hey cousin!” he greets with a wave, calling her over to his table at the edge of the dining hall, a backpack with three notebooks full of loose-leaf paper jammed inside saving her spot. It’s the big table of course, the one meant for parties of seven or eight—not two—but that never seems to stop him. “Over here!”

Karin digs a little deeper into her scarf, tugging at the back of her knit-beanie, and falls with as much grace as possible into the seat across from him, shoving his stuff to the side in the process. He grins big and wide, and for a moment she flashes back to Forehead and Ino, and she can’t help the sound of disgust bubbling up in her throat. 

If Naruto notices, he doesn’t say a thing, excitedly beginning to list off what they’re serving today. 

“I saw the menu when I came in,” Karin says, cutting him off halfway through listing the different kinds of pizzas. 

“Right, right,” he says, unaffected in his cheer. 

Trying to stop the excitement radiating off him at all times is like trying to hold back a waterfall with her bare hands, and she’s since given up on driving him away.

Karin begins to shed layers to stack next to her as Naruto jumps right into how his day’s been. She offers flat hums of vague interest and  _ oh really _ ’s when appropriate and doesn’t lift her eyes from her task until she’s two coats lighter, her hat and scarf and gloves piled atop them. When she does, she catches him waving at a passing group, no doubt one of his many acquaintances. 

“Oh, hey, I hope you don’t mind,” Naruto stops mid-sentence, as though he’s just now remembering because he’s going through the events of the last twenty-four hours. “I’ve got a friend coming by to drop off my medical waiver for my kinestheology classes.”

It always amazes her how he manages to get out a word with that many syllables without stumbling over it, but she just shrugs. “Which one is it?”

He just has so many friends. It’s actually the worst.

“Sakura… She’s uh, I don’t think you’ve met her, cousin. But we go way back! She’s been helping me with my wrist!”

As if to prove it, he holds up his right hand, bandaged tightly as usual, and she regards it with keener attention, lips pinching into the beginnings of a frown. “That isn’t from your boyfriend, is it?”

“Sasuke?” Naruto says his name so easy, his whole face lighting up, and Karin fights not to gag. “No, of course not. I mean, yeah, he’s been trying to get me into Krav Maga, but I fractured my wrist when Kiba let me borrow his longboard and—”

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Karin says, tuning out the rest of Naruto’s story and regretting bringing Sasuke up at all. Gruffer than before, she barks, “You want to wait around all day or go get something to eat?”

That always grabs him, and Naruto rises just as expected, grinning like he wasn’t the one clogging up their procession to the actual eating bit of this affair with all his gabbing. 

As usual, he stands much too close when they shuffle through the lines, asking her question after question about her day and what she’s done. 

“No, I’m skipping Genetics and Development,” she tells him when he inquires after her favorite class. “Tsunade can suck it.”

“Careful, or she might hear you, cousin.” Naruto’s laugh is a little nervous, and Karin knows it’s because he’s had plenty of run-ins with the woman before. Despite being quite sure he’s terrified of her, Karin also thinks she’s probably his favorite. Somehow. “I know she doesn’t take attendance, but…”

But Karin’s last test score was so bad she wrote a particularly scathing email about unfair grading afterwards and was rewarded by a short but sweet dismissal by Tsunade’s TA. The woman wouldn’t even respond herself. Bitch.

“I’ll pull my grade up on the next test. It’s not that hard.” 

“Okay. Let me know if I can help!”

Naruto sounds hopeful, but is mostly distracted filling his plate with everything that a Health Science major should know is liable to cause death by sudden cardiac arrest. When Karin mentions it to him, he just waves it off and says that anything that tastes this good can’t be as bad as they say. 

She goes for something less likely to kill her before she’s thirty and together they turn back towards their table, Karin complaining about the variety of the food here considering how much she’s paying to attend this university. 

Halfway through her rant, a flash of pink catches her eye and she goes stiff from head to toe, freezing mid-step and almost dumping her plate onto the ground as Naruto accidentally bumps her arm. 

“Oh, hey,” he says, tone bleeding lighter. “There she is!”

Hovering by their table in more clothes than Karin has ever seen her, Forehead stands with a folder as thick as her arm, composed and collected—until she sees Karin standing beside Naruto. 

“You!” Karin snaps before she can think better of it, rushing forward and dropping her plate on their table so some of the pasta stacked atop it spills over the side. She’s got one accusatory finger jabbing Forehead in the sternum before she can figure out what to fill the silence of their inevitable meeting with. Following her gut, she goes with, “What’s your problem!”

For all the urgency of Karin’s approach, Forehead doesn’t respond right away, her expression changing in increments: surprise to recognition to delight. 

She’s laughing right in Karin’s face before Karin can find it within herself not to be shocked; of  _ course _ she’d react like this. Since when has anything she’s ever done made sense anyway?

“Uh, cousin?” Naruto is at her shoulder. In any other situation, she might be overjoyed to see that even he can be taken off guard, that there are some things even he can’t just roll with—now, she just hates that it isn’t obvious to everyone else what’s going on. “What are you doing?”

In front of her, Forehead is laughing so hard there are tears at the corners of her eyes, and the three of them are drawing enough attention that soon their unfortunate meeting will be center-stage entertainment for everyone shoving food into their face between classes. 

“Naruto,” she manages, her shoulder shaking.  _ “This _ is your cousin?”

“Naruto,” Karin snarls.  _ “This _ is your friend?”

With both of them looking right at him, Naruto does the only thing he can in this situation: he holds his hands up in the air and assumes the most convincing position of surrender he can. 

*

Her name is Sakura. 

It takes the better part of ten minutes to clear up some of the misunderstandings surrounding this mess. Karin spends this time glaring daggers at Sakura and interjecting at crucial points:  _ no, _ she doesn’t think she overreacted during their first meeting, and  _ yes, _ she is absolutely serious about that.

Sakura explains that  _ yes, _ she was sorry for bumping into her, but  _ no, _ she’s not sorry for smiling at her every time she’s seen her over the last two months. Frankly, Karin thinks this is outrageous, and tells her so. 

“Wait, wait, wait,” Naruto cuts in, and Karin shoots him a look like murder. Unfortunately, he isn’t deterred. “You’re mad at her for  _ smiling _ at you?”

“She’s doing it to be an ass!” Karin insists, shifting her accusatory gaze towards Sakura, who has somehow joined them at the table now and is picking off Naruto’s tray. 

“Guilty,” Sakura laughs, popping a pepperoni from Naruto’s pizza into her mouth.

“See?”

Karin huffs, reaching across the table to swat the woman’s hand away from her cousin’s tray. Naruto seems almost touched by it, but then decides he doesn’t mind sharing with Sakura at all, and gives her a look as if to tell her so. Karin huffs again, narrowing her eyes down at her own untouched tray. She sticks up for him, and what does she get! Nothing!

“Sakura, that’s… Kinda mean?” Naruto sounds unsure, like he’s getting caught up in the nitty-gritty details about the whole thing. 

“Smiling is mean?” Sakura asks, going for a fry. 

“I mean, I guess. Maybe?” Naruto is too busy working out the logistics to notice the steady dent she’s making in his mountain of food. Does she not have a meal plan of her own? Karin eyes her up and down, considering the likelihood that she doesn’t even go here. “You guys should make up!”

Karin jerks to awareness in her seat.  _ “What.” _

Next to Naruto, Sakura sits with a couple of fries dangling from her mouth.

Naruto sits between them, so when he notices they’re both looking at him like they don’t understand the words coming out of his mouth, he has to twist his head back and forth. A smarter man would have starting stuffing his mouth, but Naruto just asks, “What?” 

Sometimes Karin wonders if they’re really related. 

“You want me to apologize for smiling?” Sakura asks when she finally gets down the food. To add insult to injury, there’s a faint sliver of a grin on her face now, like somehow this is all a little funny to her. 

“For being an ass,” Karin corrects sharply. “Not that I’d accept it.”

“Oh, well then.” Sakura turns her attention back to the folder of paperwork she came with originally. She slides it across the table and completely ignores Karin when she says, “Good to know! Now Naruto, this is going to cover you for about four weeks, and then you’ll need another x-ray—”

“Guys, come on!” Naruto cuts her off, throwing one arm around her shoulders and then swaying back towards Karin to grab her as well. Suddenly all Karin can see is the sweater Naruto’s wearing—the same one he probably wore last week, if the smell is anything to go by. She blanches and tries to wriggle free. “I don’t want my best friend and my favorite cousin to fight!”

Sakura has better luck. As she manages to slip out from under his arm, she says, “I don’t think we’re fighting. Karin, do you think we’re fighting?”

The first half of Karin’s response is muffled as she gets her head stuck between Naruto’s arm and his big chest. The second half comes with a distinct bite:  _ “—Yes.” _

Sakura’s smile finally fades completely, and Karin delights in the way she suddenly looks like her patience is wearing thin. From the way she’s now eyeing Karin across the table like she’s the cause, Karin thinks she might just be getting somewhere with this now. 

“Well, I can’t help it if running makes me happy.  _ You _ should try it sometime. Whenever Ino and I see you, you always look like someone’s just told you your puppy died,” Sakura says. “Or maybe like you just killed someone’s puppy.”

“Maybe you should waste less time running! It’s not like you’re paying twenty grand a year to be here or anything. You could try acting like you have better things to do every once in a while!” 

Karin’s voice carries, and once again, she feels the attention of two dozen bored university students waiting for something interesting to happen. 

Naruto grimaces in that way that makes Karin think he’s actually got two brain cells to rub together up there. Like he’s aware of what’s happening around him and he knows he can’t try to blow through it with a few happy words. 

Sakura only rolls her eyes. “Yes, well! Speaking of. Gotta cut this short. Better things to do and all.”

She pushes back in her chair and stands with a little more force than strictly necessary. Karin watches her like a dog on a leash, trying to figure out the ways she make her stay. Considering this is the first time Karin’s had the chance to spit more than three words to her, she’s not eager to let her get away just yet. 

“Tsunade is expecting me in fifteen minutes, so!” Sakura claps a hand on Naruto’s back and does her best impression of Totally Unaffected. “I’ll be on my way—”

“Oh, that’s it!”

Sakura stops mid-sentence and shoots a glare Naruto’s way, apparently at the end of her Too Cheery For You routine. Before she can get in a word edgewise, Naruto is already explaining that Karin—he points her way, in case Sakura has forgotten—is in Tsuande’s Genetics and Development, and that she’s having a bit of trouble, and the last test was  _ really _ rough, and maybe, since Sakura is helping with some of Tsunade’s classes, and because she’s good at all this medical mumbo-jumbo, she could just—

Karin flushes bright red before he can get the rest of it out, lurching over in her seat to cover his mouth with her hands, but the damage is already done. 

When Karin whips around to snap at Sakura to get gone already, she can see the mental gymnastics going on behind her eyes. “Wait…” 

“No!”

Recognition lights up her face as she makes exactly the connection Karin made approximately two seconds earlier. “Karin? Oh my god, you’re the one who emailed her and—”

“Shut up—”

_ “‘The university should be ashamed it’s paying your tenure?’  _ Oh my god, that was you—”

“Well, I’m right!”

“Um,” Naruto says against Karin’s hand. 

“Tsunade laughed so hard she couldn’t even type and—” 

Karin is out of her seat in a second, and shoving Sakura away towards the door in two. There’s a string of curses rushing out so fast that she loses track of all of them, trusting herself to make Sakura’s dismissal as venomous as possible as her face turns two shades darker, now a perfect match to her hair.

Fortunately for her, Sakura seems content to go. Unfortunately, she doesn’t stop laughing the entire way. 

By the time Karin’s all but thrown Sakura out with her own two hands, this entire half of the cafeteria is staring at her, and even Naruto is twisted in his seat, craning his head to get a look. 

Karin stands, breathes. Watches Sakura’s back retreating through the glass doors, head and shoulders already hunched over her phone to tell what’s her face—Ino. It sends another hot pulse of embarrassment through her.

Without saying a word or looking at any of the fifty or so fucks eyeballing her, Karin marches back to her table and sits down. She picks up her fork. Puts it down. Realizes she’s not hungry at all, in fact. 

Naruto slides a little closer. 

“Cousin?”

The glare she fixes him with isn’t a withering as she wants, not with embarrassment clogging up all her executive function. 

“Um…”

Karin gives up on the glare. Buries her face in her hands instead. From between her fingers, she grumbles, “Fuck her.”

*

Later that night, after Karin has worn away at the events of the day with a long, unsatisfying soak in the too-small tub of her apartment, and then, afterwards, a slightly more satisfying splurge for the nice pizza place down the road, she gets a text. 

It’s from a number she doesn’t recognize, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t know who it is.

_ If you ever need a tutor, let me know. ;) _

There’s nothing kind in that emoji, and—in fact!—seeing that particularly mocking punctuation at the end of that particularly smug message makes Karin toss her phone across the room, losing it for a solid five minutes beneath the sofa. 

When she finally finds it, she texts back: 

_ go fuck yourself _

**Author's Note:**

> tune in next time to see if karin ever actually goes to genetics and development!!!!!!


End file.
